This invention relates to terminal enclosures for housing telephone or other communication cable connections and the like.
Heretofore in the telecommunications industry, in order to provide telephone or networking service to a plurality of customers in a building, a centralized location has been designated, which is customarily called an intermediate distribution frame, or IDF. The IDF is typically a common room, closet or wall of a room, set aside for the routing of all of the communication cables for all of the work stations of different entities and users in all of the offices or tenant spaces in the building. The IDF must be located away from electrical power connections in order to avoid electromagnetic interference with communications transmission. Each work station with communications capability added or changed requires new lengths of cable to be led to and from the centralized IDF, often involving lengthy and circuitous routing, thus extensive amounts of cable. The space required for the IDF can be sizable, and it lessens the amount of floor space available for other uses by which leasing income from tenants could be earned. Another disadvantage of IDFs is that they are necessarily accessible by all tenants of the building, resulting in little or no security from meddling therewith.
The object of this invention is to decentralize cable termination and switching to smaller user-defined zones located in close proximity to the work stations served, thereby eliminating or diminishing the need for centralized IDFs, decrease the amount of wiring or other cable required for each work station, provide security, and free floor space by utilizing plenum space between a true ceiling and a suspended false ceiling of tiles. The objects of this invention are achieved by providing a recessed fire-resistant enclosure within the ceiling tile grid above each work station. This invention, the Zone Cabling Termination Cabinet, is intended to make it easier to maintain, change, add or replace communications connections, to move the point of wiring connections closer to the work station, thereby reducing the extent of disruption of work activities and the huge amount of wire running back and forth throughout a building, which heretofore has been required to install or make any changes to a communications system, and also improving reception of communications by shortening the cabling.